The present invention relates to an IC card processing apparatus which includes a data reading/writing unit for exchanging data with an IC card and terminal equipment for exchanging data with a data reading/writing unit.
A conventional IC card processing apparatus processes data by allowing the terminal equipment to transmit data to the data reading/writing unit before allowing the data 10 reading/writing unit to eventually identify the contents of the IC card. If the data reading/writing unit receives command data to control an operation of the data reading/writing unit itself, it executes operations corresponding to the content of the command data, and then transmits the result of the process to the terminal equipment as response data. On the other hand, if the data reading/writing unit receives data other than a control or command signal from the terminal equipment, the data reading/writing unit transmits the received data to the IC card. The IC card executes processes corresponding to the content of the command data and transmits the processed result to the data reading/writing unit as the response data. The data reading/writing unit transmits received response data to the terminal equipment. A typical example of an IC card processing apparatus incorporating the above structure is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,672,182 to Hirokawa.
When operating such an IC card processing apparatus, the data reading/writing unit relays data between the terminal equipment and the IC card. To achieve this objective, it is essential for the system to execute communication between the terminal equipment and the data reading/writing unit and also between the data reading/writing unit and the IC card. This requires the system to spend a significant amount of time executing the entire data processing operation.
Recently, another system for processing IC cards has been under development by the assignee of this invention. This system would allow the terminal apparatus to directly exchange the data with the IC card. To achieve this, data lines of both the terminal equipment and the data reading/writing unit are directly connected to the data line of the IC card.
All of these systems, however, and specifically the latter, have another problem. Specifically, a personal identification number (PIN) is delivered to the IC card via the keyboard of the data reading/writing unit without being delivered to the terminal equipment. The security of the system is maintained based the PIN information never being delivered to the terminal equipment. However, the PIN information may potentially flow into the terminal equipment because data lines of the terminal equipment and the IC card are directly connected to each other. This reduces the security of the system.